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500 U.S. deaths from police Tasers; Amnesty calls for strict guidelines
Mary Shaw
On February 13, Johnnie Kamahi Warren died after a police officer used a Taser on him at least twice outside an Alabama bar. The police had been called when Warren became disorderly and combative at the bar.
Warren's death raises the Taser-related death toll in the U.S. to at least 500.
Warren was unarmed. And that is not uncommon. In fact, a 2008 report by Amnesty International (AI) examined data on hundreds of deaths related to police Taser use and found that an alarming number of those who died were unarmed.
According to the report, "Tasers are frequently deployed in situations where firearms or other weapons would not be an option. For example, police have used Tasers on unarmed people who fail to comply immediately with instructions, who struggle while they are being handcuffed or who try to run or walk away from minor incidents. People who are intoxicated or verbally disruptive, but not committing, or threatening to commit, a serious crime have also had Tasers used against them."
The Most Colossal Failure of Nerve in Human History
Steven Earl Salmony
By 'kicking all cans down the road' and confronting no present dangers, perhaps the human community is about to come face to face with the worst of two worlds: the results of a human population explosion and a human population crash. The leviathan-like size of the human population in our time puts Earth's finite resources and its frangible environs at risk because the exploding human population worldwide dissipates resources and pollutes the environment faster than the Earth can replenish itself for human benefit. As a consequence of the 'politically correct' denial of a human population explosion, many too many human beings are invited by their leaders to engage in rapacious per capita consumption and excessive individual hoarding of Earth's body, and to recklessly degrade its ecology with pollutants. Soon to become patently unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species appear to be fast approaching a point in history when the monstrous size of the human population so overspreads the Earth that the human species itself ends up being the precipitant of an unimaginable sort of global ecological wreckage and a human population crash. Where are the stewards of the Earth?
Eye in the Sky Spying on Americans
by Stephen Lendman
Money power runs America. So do lobbies representing all corporate and other interests.
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) represents dozens of influential companies.
They include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Bell Hellicopter Textron, Sikorsky Aircraft, Goodrich, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hill & Knowlton, and many more promoting unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone technology.
Against targeted countries, it's America's newest sport. From distant command centers, operators kill by remote control. They use computer keyboards and multiple monitors. UAVs stand ready round-the-clock for missions.
Predator drones perform sanitized killing on the cheap compared to manned aircraft. Independent experts believe militants are hit about 2% of the time. All others are noncombatants, despite official disclaimers.
In 1995, Predator drones were used for the first time in Bosnia. In 2001, the Global Hawk drone was used in Afghanistan. Throughout the Afghan and Iraq wars, the Pentagon used various type drones for combat and spying missions.
Deepening Greek Tragedy
by Stephen Lendman
Greece is banker occupied. Ordinary people have no say. Parliamentarians get orders and obey. Despite multiple painful austerity rounds, Troika power demands more - the IMF, EU and European Central Bank (ECB).
Money power dictates bankers get paid first. People needs are sacrificed for them. Bankers also want implementation guarantees for enacted policies and more coming. For starters, they demand cutting another 325 million euros.
European Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said more had to be done no matter the human harm and economic ruin. Ordinary Greeks face impoverishment and neoserfdom. Since 2007, Greece's economy shrunk almost 20% en route to total collapse.
Out of Control Violence in Libya
by Stephen Lendman
Wherever NATO intervenes, massacres, mass destruction, and unspeakable horrors and human misery follow.
Once Africa's most developed country, Libya today's a ravaged, out-of-control charnel house. Tens of thousands died. Multiples more were injured, made homeless, and forcibly displaced.
Terror now stalks Libyans living in fear. Protracted conflict continues. Violence and instability rage. Expect no end for years. Washington's-led NATO war is one of history's great crimes. Colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation were planned.
America got another bloodstained imperial trophy. Keeping it's another matter. Green Resistance continues its liberating struggle.
Amnesty International's (AI) New Report
Better late than never explaining NATO's legacy. AI's 2011 account misreported "The Battle for Libya." It pointed fingers the wrong way. It blamed Gaddafi for NATO aggression. It falsely accused him of "kill(ing) and injur(ing) scores of unarmed protesters."
Banker Occupied Europe and America
by Stephen Lendman
Money power rules. Across Europe and America, governments follow banker diktats. They demand economies and people suffer to assure they're paid.
Money power in private hands and democracy can't co-exist. It buys what it wants at the expense of government of, by and for the people. It never was and isn't now.
Wall Street and major European banks usurped unprecedented money making power. With complicit politicians, they make it the old fashioned way. They steal it.
The New York Times: America's Unofficial Propaganda Ministry
by Stephen Lendman
For over a century, The Times played America's lead role disseminating state/corporate propaganda duplicitously.
Its daily diet features managed, not real, news, information and analysis. Readers don't get what they pay for. They're cheated on what matters most.
What it reports, other major media scoundrels regurgitate. Readers and viewers are left misinformed and uninformed in the dark.
Wealth and power support defines its agenda, especially when America goes to war or plans to. In the lead, The Times cheerleads supportively.
Last year, it backed NATO's killing machine in Libya. It sanitized mass killing, destruction, and human misery. Now it's waging war on Syria and Iran. It vilifies regimes Washington opposes. It defends sabotage and targeted assassinations.
It blames both countries for defending their sovereign rights. It turns victims into villains. It ignores lawless Western intervention. It brazenly justifies the unjustifiable. It backs the worst of imperial lawlessness. It cheerleads war, the more the better. It denigrates leaders supporting diplomatic solutions.
Of Uncertain Futures: As We Are Not Yet One
by Jan Lundberg
photo by Jan Lundberg
As the modern age accelerates its downward spiral toward an uncertain outcome, we are divided in our outlooks and fears. Yet, if we examine them, and if enough of us have a dialogue resulting in action, we might discover our apparent weaknesses in such a way to make us stronger.
More "haves" than ever sense an uncertain future, mainly that of becoming have-nots. But when haves admit that deeper threats are getting close to engulfing humanity -- ecological deterioration, famine over rising energy prices and water shortage -- the future appears downright doubtful.
Direct Fossil Fuel Subsidies Worldwide: Half a Trillion Dollars Annually - commentary and findings
Culture Change, Lester Brown, Jan Lundberg
Here are disturbing numbers from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, by Lester R. Brown, and its excerpt "Governments Spend $1.4 Billion Per Day to Destabilize Climate" released by Earth Policy Institute on Jan. 19, 2012. First, Culture Change provides critical comment:
It is a public service that Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown, now with his Earth Policy Institute, has helped expose the huge, ongoing financial subsidies to fossil fuels industries. Governments' and corporations' persisting with this policy -- legal corruption of the worst order at a time of out-of-control climate change -- is nothing short of insane or criminal.
However, before presenting the IEA's findings as reported by Lester Brown, a discussion of the underlying agenda or worldview of the orientation of the IEA and Earth Policy Institute ought to be considered. First, the IEA, representing the top 34 industrial economies through its sponsoring group Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, can be said to be waking up to peak oil and the dangers of climate change. So its work is more focused in recent years.
Financial Oligarch Power Raping Greece
by Stephen Lendman
On February 12, Greece's banker controlled parliament passed sweeping austerity measures on top of multiple previous rounds.
New ones include:
- sacking 15,000 public workers in 2012 and 150,000 by 2015;
- slashing private sector wages by 20%;
- lowering monthly minimum wages from 750 to 600 euros;
- cutting fast disappearing monthly unemployment benefits from 460 to 360 euros; and
- reducing pensions many Greeks need to survive by 15%.
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